Lina Sinisterra is a well known artist who works out of Bogota. Better known for her paintings or art installations using candy she has recently hit the headlines again for the presentation of her latest public sculpture situated at the Arturo Merino Benitez Airport in Pudahuel, Santiago, Chile. For some the installation has a polemical side as the aeroplanes that form the sculpture are lit in the colors of the Colombian flag and not the Chilean!
The following article has been translated by ArtColombia from the original article by Denisse Espinoza published in La Tercera newspaper on the 22nd December 2015.
Aircraft lit for the Pudahuel airport
“All Destinations” is an artwork 14 meters high of the Colombian artist Lina Sinisterra, winner of the public art commission MOP Antúnez which has been newly installed at the entrance of Arturo Merino Benitez Airport.
After more than 10 years of twists and turns, the work of the Colombian Lina Sinisterra (1970) has just opened at the entrance of Arturo Merino Benitez Airport. In 2001, the artist first participated at the contest defined by the Nemesio Antúnez Commission Ministry of Public Works (MOP), which allocates 0.5% of the total cost from the airport to the development of a work of art. That year, Sinisterra came second, being surpassed by Chilean Patrick Steeger and his work Legoport, a sculpture made with suitcases. Sinisterra was then offered the opportunity for her art proposal to replace the mural “Verbo América” by Roberto Matta, which was transferred from the airport to the Metro station Quinta Normal in 2003.
However, due to administrative issues the budget to create Sinisterra’s work was frozen, only to be revived as project this year, but now placed outside the airport and with monumental proportions. The installation “All Destinations”, with a cost of CLP$ 250 million (around USD 350,000), is 14 meters high and 30 meters in diameter, and is composed of 42 colored planes that are illiminated at night through a system of LED lights, programmed to turn on and off to simulate a motion effect, as if the planes were advancing one after another, moving and returning to the same place.
“I have an obsession with rescuing the pleasure and joy I felt as a child with colors and toys. I want to return to childhood playfulness. The sculpture is a welcome and an invitation to this place, where it one can be on their way towards a dream, to start unexpected experiences” says Sinisterra.
The Colombian artist has a strong tie with Chile: in the late 90s she attended the Masters in Visual Arts at the University of Chile and lived in the country for 10 years, while a student of Eugenio Dittborn. Her initial training, though, is as a psychologist: to Sinisterra art has a therapeutic nature, rather than a profession it is a way of life.
Now based in Colombia, the artist has created installations and exhibitions in Bogota, Sao Paulo, Caracas, Madrid, Santiago and has just participated in the Miami Art Basel Art Fair. “I do not feel connected to political art. Mine is the aesthetic pleasure and from there to understand something else, but not from tragedy” she says.
The Antúñez Commission, for its part, created in 1994 has installed more than 180 public artworks throughout Chile. This year it also inaugurated a sculpture by Federico Assler in Coronel, which cost CLP$ 114 million, and in May three winning works were awarded to artists José Vicente Gajardo, Marcela Romagnoli and Francisca Sánchez to be installed along the highway of the Puerto Montt-Pargua for a total cost of CLP$ 446 million. They will be opened in the coming months.
Link to original article in Spanish: Cultura-La Tercera
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